


it's the only way to heal now

by Quentanilien



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-26
Updated: 2014-10-26
Packaged: 2018-02-22 16:47:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2514776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quentanilien/pseuds/Quentanilien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s supposed to be a routine mission to hunt down the remaining Patriot troops, but it’s just Charlie’s luck that she winds up alone with Monroe waiting for reinforcements instead.</p>
<p>(Or that time Charlie and Bass played a drinking game and accidentally got really honest with each other.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's the only way to heal now

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rebelleleader](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rebelleleader/gifts).



"Looks like they're camping out there for the night. Sun’s not even setting for a few more hours." Charlie tried not to sound as irritated as she felt.

"It's customary to salute a superior officer when giving a report, Lieutenant," Bass drawled lazily behind her. She shot a glare over her shoulder. He'd already settled on a bale of musty hay and was cleaning his handgun with practiced movements.

Charlie rolled her eyes and pressed her face back to the gap between wooden slats. "Whatever, General."

"I should pistol-whip you for insubordination," he said, his mild tone belying his words.

"I'd like to see you try," she muttered.

This constant sniping between them was second nature by this point, all the venom leached away by time and familiarity. It was almost surreal if she thought about it, so she tried not to think about it. Ever.

"They're digging a really big fire pit. Not exactly trying to hide." She narrowed her eyes, studying the troop of Patriots outside. Were they really that dense? Or maybe they just felt safe in Plains Nation territory.

"Good. Saves us time digging graves for them later."

Charlie sat back on her heels. "Your reinforcements better get here soon."

"Relax, Charlotte. They'll be here."

She settled down reluctantly, back against the wall and knees drawn up. "I know they'll be here. I'm more concerned about when, seeing as I'm stuck in this damn hayloft with you until they get here."

Monroe dropped fresh rounds into his gun, one by one, and snapped it shut. "No one ordered you to stay here. That's on you. I said you were free to go back with the scouts if that's what you wanted."

Charlie snorted. "Yeah, like I was gonna leave you here alone to screw us over yet again." It was a tired accusation. She'd used it to death, until it hardly meant anything anymore, to either of them.

"Screw who over? Blanchard? Texas? We're all on the same side. I've got it good right now. I'm not gonna ruin that." He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. His eyes were too piercing, even in the dim lighting of the barn. "Who do you think I'm going to screw over, Charlie? You?"

She had no answer to that question, so she set her jaw and stared at him defiantly instead.

He heaved a long-suffering sigh and holstered his gun, abandoning his hay bale to explore the nooks and crannies of the loft.

Charlie watched him in silence. It was either that or take a nap, and she was too jumpy to sleep with fifty Patriot soldiers a stone’s throw away.

This felt a little strange, if she was honest with herself—being alone with Monroe again. Just them against the world, for the time being. She supposed the last time was before she’d brought him to Willoughby, or maybe the shootout at the school. When he’d abandoned her and come back for her, all in the space of a few frantic and angry heartbeats. A gun in her face, a throat slash, those three words she hadn’t quite meant to say, and a quiet look exchanged. One she still didn’t understand the meaning of.

Not that she understood the meaning of any of them. Monroe had saved her life enough times now that it took her more than one hand to count them, and always, after, he just gave her that silent look that she couldn’t define. It was almost like he was disappointed in himself. For what, she wasn’t sure. For acting like a decent person? For caring?

A board creaked loudly beneath his feet. He froze, and Charlie scowled at him. “Watch it,” she hissed, twisting to glance through the crack at the Patriot camp again. She swore, if he called attention to their hiding place, she was going to slip down the ladder and leave him to fend for himself.

Which he’d probably manage just fine. The man was a whirlwind of weapons, cutting his way through his opponents like he was untouchable. But she’d fought at his side enough times now to know that wasn’t true. He was just a man. He bled, he bruised, he broke. She’d seen it. And yet it was so easy to forget that when she saw him in motion. It was like he was born to fight.

No wonder he was General Monroe again. Some things were the same, and everything else was different.

He still didn't look like the clean-shaven, cultured General Monroe she'd first encountered in Philadelphia, stiff and formal and icily dangerous in his militia uniform. Hands clean while everyone else did the dirty work. He was just Monroe with power, unshaven and unkempt and deadly with any weapon that touched his hand. Maybe that had been his problem all along; he wasn't made to sit in offices and give commands—he belonged right here, in the dirt and grit and blood with the rest of them. She was reluctant to admit it, but he was a good leader like this, people who'd hated his guts just a few short years ago now willing to follow him to their deaths.

Not her, though. She wasn't ready to die. She'd thought she was, once, but she'd been wrong. So very wrong.

They'd both abandoned their military uniforms for this mission to hunt down the remaining pockets of Patriots. It was strange seeing him in the leather jacket again, like no time had passed at all.

"Jackpot," he muttered, laughing softly and leaning down to pick something up from the floor. He twisted around, a large, full bottle of some kind of alcohol dangling from his hand.

Charlie raised an eyebrow. "Really, General? Drinking on the job?"

He sloshed the liquid around in the bottle. "Nothing else to do."

Charlie eyed it warily. "What is it?"

"Who cares?" He walked towards her, pressing his back to the wall and sliding down to sit next to her. She knew she should shift away, but she couldn't summon the energy.

He popped it open, took a generous swig, and pulled the bottle away to study it. Charlie watched his face as he swallowed, a brief wince crossing it before he made a satisfied noise. "Now that's what I call moonshine." He held the bottle out to Charlie.

She wrinkled her nose.

"What?" He grinned. He'd been doing that a lot more lately, and it threw Charlie off. It made the skin around his eyes crinkle up, and he looked like a completely different person. "Scared to swap a little spit with a Monroe? Not like it's the first time."

Charlie wrapped her hand around his and yanked the bottle away before he could refer to Connor any more than obliquely. He'd become a sort of taboo topic, since the mere mention of him threw them both into foul moods, for very different reasons.

Charlie tipped the bottle back. It was disgusting, but the burning trail it left down her throat was far from unpleasant. There was a reason she didn't drink much.

She offered it back to him. "That's enough for me."

He shook his head. "Come on, Charlie. Lighten up. If it weren't for the blackout, you'd be at college drinking that whole thing, then going to play beer pong after. How old are you now? Twenty-one, twenty-two?"

"Twenty-four," she said dully, unsure how so much time had managed to get away from her while she was fighting this endless war.

He leaned his head back against the wall. "Shit, guess I missed a couple of birthdays."

Charlie snorted. "Yeah, all twenty-four." She tipped the bottle back again.

His fingers fidgeted with the sleeve of his jacket. "Twenty-three."

"What?" Charlie spluttered through a mouthful of moonshine.

"I got you a pink tricycle, if memory serves. Which you promptly crashed into a fire hydrant."

She twisted her head to look at him, but he was staring at the wall opposite them, a distant look in his eyes. "You're joking, right?" He had to be.

He turned to look at her. "Serious as a heart attack, Charlotte." He pulled the bottle out of her hands.

Her mouth opened and closed as she tried to process that.

He spoke again before she'd recovered. "Let's play a game."

Charlie frowned. "I don't want to play a game."

He angled his head towards her, jostling her in the elbow with the bottle. "You're too young to be so bitter."

"And you're too old to be so childish," she shot back.

He looked unfazed. "Here's the rules. I say something I've never done, and if you've done it you drink. If you haven't, I drink. Then we switch."

"That's a terrible game." And an even worse idea for them to play it. She thought of all the things she could say.  _I've never held my mom prisoner for eight years. I've never been a deposed dictator. I've never conscripted children. I've never inadvertently nuked two cities._ "I'll start," she said instead. "I've never had sex with my mom." She raised her eyebrows, a silent challenge.  _You really want to do this?_

He made a face like he'd tasted something even worse than the moonshine. "Well, forget that," he muttered under his breath.

She gnawed on a ragged fingernail, knowing she should feel smug but feeling nervous and jittery instead. "Why do you call me that?" she blurted out. The moonshine was hitting her faster than she'd expected.

"Call you what?"

So he was going to play dumb. "What do you think, Sebastian?" she said bitingly.

He didn't look at her, just held the bottle up in front of his face and swished the liquid inside around. "New game."

Charlie groaned. "I don't want to drink anymore, Monroe."

He ignored her. "You ask a question, I'll give an answer. You drink if you don't believe me."

She smirked. "I'd black out within two minutes."

"We'll take turns."

She twisted her head to the side to study the earnest lines of his face, his wide, innocent eyes. He was an idiot if he thought she was going to fall for that crap. "Sir, yes, sir," she said sarcastically, tipping him a mocking salute and snatching the moonshine back to prepare herself.

Monroe was silent for a while, looking down at her hands where they clasped the bottle instead of at her face, and Charlie wondered if she was supposed to repeat the question.

"I call you Charlotte," he said at length, "because that's what you used to tell me to call you."

Charlie frowned. He was avoiding eye contact, trying so hard to be dismissive that he was clearly telling the truth. She didn't take a drink.

He dragged his eyes up to her face, looking surprised that she believed him. Her lips twisted up. "Your turn."

"Why do you still call me Monroe?"

Charlie tried not to flinch. "What am I supposed to call you, Uncle Bass?" she joked.

He didn't look amused. "Don't deflect."

This was a terrible game too. She wasn't ready to be vulnerable in front of him. She didn't think she ever would be. Too late for that, though. "I think…I knew someone named Bass once. And he wasn't you." She set the bottle down and pushed it across the wooden floor towards him. He didn't touch it. A crease appeared between his eyebrows, and he looked at her expectantly.

She was feeling annoyed, and that made her reckless. "Why didn't you go after Connor?"

"I don't know where he went."

Charlie laughed and gulped down several mouthfuls of moonshine. Monroe frowned at her, so she supposed an explanation was necessary. "That's bullshit. You chased Miles all over the continent. You went to Mexico to find Connor. And now, just…nothing. I know you love him."

A pained look flashed across Monroe's face. "Yeah, I love him. And he hates me. I'm done chasing after people who want nothing to do with me. Wasted too many years doing that."

Miles' name hung heavy in the air between them, unspoken. He and Monroe weren't at each other's throats anymore, but there was a distance between them that might never be breached. Charlie could see that they'd both been suffering silently over that for the last couple of years. Monroe was not subtle about it, but Miles pushed it down deep where no one but her could see it. She thought it was possible he even hid it from her mom.

"Why are you here? I know your mom doesn't want you doing this."

Apparently Monroe could read minds now. "I told you, just making sure you don't screw us over," she said, deliberately misinterpreting the question.

"You know that's not what I mean, Charlotte. Why are you still doing this? Why are you fighting for Texas? I'm sure Rachel would rather you were farming or having babies or some other domestic fantasy."

"That's not me," Charlie whispered. "I can't do that anymore, not after Dad. And Danny. I don't like hunting down Patriots. But fighting is the only thing I know how to do. I just…I gotta see something through."

Monroe took a tiny sip.

"Which part?" Charlie asked bitterly.

"Hunting down Patriots. I know you like killing those bastards as much as I do. You just have to pretend you don't, or you won't recognize yourself anymore."

Charlie didn't bother arguing. A tear slipped out of the corner of her eye, and she was definitely buzzing or that would never be happening. "I miss them." She swiped a sleeve across her nose. "It feels like…what's that called? A phantom limb? Like…I can still feel it there and it hurts, but it's not there and never will be. I just want it to stop."

"It doesn't stop," Monroe said hoarsely. "It never stops."

"How long has it been?" she whispered. She knew he'd had losses in his life, but she'd never wanted to hear about them. It would make him too human, too relatable. Too much like her.

"Twenty years, four months, and six days,” he said, and it slipped so easily off his tongue, like it was a tally he kept daily. Like it was the first thing he thought of when he woke up in the morning.

Tears pricked at Charlie’s eyes again, and she blinked them away. She did the same thing.

Monroe wasn’t done, though. “Fourteen and a half years, give or take. I don’t know what day it was. Early blackout years, we didn’t have a calendar.” He choked on a small, devastated laugh. “I don’t even know what my daughter’s birthday would’ve been.”

Charlie’s head snapped up, eyes wide. She’d never known; he’d never given the smallest hint. Miles had never given the smallest hint. She studied his face, pain written in every line and angle, and she didn’t know what to say. She’d once accused him of being a sociopath, of using his tears to manipulate people. She knew better now.

He sniffed and shifted on the floor, drawing one knee up. “Whose turn is it?”

“I don’t want to play anymore,” Charlie murmured in protest.

“I do,” he said flatly, shoving the bottle back into her hands.

She felt defiant at that, and under normal circumstances she would have refused to cooperate. But he wasn’t acting like General Monroe tonight and there was a tiny tear stuck to one of his eyelashes and he was sitting so close their arms almost brushed when they passed the bottle back and forth and she felt pleasantly lightheaded and loose-tongued but she cursed him inwardly all the same because he was making her want answers to questions she’d avoided asking for the better part of two years.

This whole thing was such a bad idea, sober or not. Charlie felt like she was teetering on the edge of a long drop into the unknown. Miles had told her a story once about the time he went skydiving, how he'd thought the decision was made when he got on the plane. But the real decision was when he was staring down at his feet, an inch away from a two-mile drop to earth. How he'd regretted it the second he took that step into nothing, how it was too late to go back. She felt like that was what she was doing now, except she wasn't sure there would be a parachute to catch her. She should back out now, before she went too far. But she was already mesmerized by the idea of the fall, even if it was dangerous. Mathesons weren't known for their caution, after all.

She wrapped her arms around her knees, still holding the bottle in one hand, steeling herself, then angled her head towards him, resting her temple against the wall. "Why did you come back?"

He gave her one of those unfathomable looks. "Which time?"

"Every time."

His lips twitched. "You little cheat."

Charlie raised an eyebrow.

He looked at the opposite wall, so all she could see was his profile. "That's a loaded question, Charlie," he said tiredly, a note of warning in his tone.

But she didn't know what he was warning her about. That she wouldn't like his answer? Or that she would? She said nothing, waiting with a strange, tight feeling in her chest.

He took his time answering, face so stoic that Charlie started wondering if he was angry at her for asking. Finally, he scrubbed a hand down his face, clenching and unclenching his jaw. “Damn it,” he hissed.

So he was angry about something. _Good. Let him be._ This whole stupid thing was his idea.

“I don’t know, Charlie,” he said, shaking his head. “It was partly for me, and partly for Miles, and partly for you.”

She blinked a couple of times and shifted closer to him. “Which part was for me?” she asked huskily. She knew she didn’t imagine it when his gaze darted down to her lips before flicking back up to her eyes. Somewhere in the back of her mind, a little voice was telling her this was dangerous, but it was so faint she could barely register it, like the alcohol was soaking into her synapses and blocking off the signal.

“I don’t know,” he protested, but it sounded weaker than before.

Charlie brought the mouth of the bottle to her lips and held it there, waiting.

Monroe looked down at them again. “You gonna take a drink?” he asked, voice pitched lower than usual.

“If you don’t give a better answer,” she said, lips brushing against the cold glass.

A muscle in his jaw jumped. “Put the bottle down, Charlotte,” he all but growled.

Startled, she obeyed before she even realized she’d done it, setting it down on the wooden floor between them a little harder than was advisable with Patriots just outside the barn. She never took her eyes off his face.

He seemed to struggle for words momentarily, but when he opened his mouth they rolled off his tongue easily enough. It was possible she wasn’t the only one affected by the moonshine. _What the hell is in this stuff, anyway?_ she wondered absently, before he started speaking and she forgot the question.

“I wanted to be trustworthy again, to someone. To Miles, mostly. Figured out that was a lost cause pretty quickly, but I kept trying. And you were always looking at me. Like you were…trying to understand me. And that made me want to be worth understanding, I guess. Just…worth something.”

He looked so serious she felt a sudden, desperate need to lighten the mood. “You were already worth six ounces of diamonds.”

The joke fell flat. He was still gazing at her intently, and it made her feel like she was slowly melting into the floor.

“I need you to know something, Charlotte. That bullet would never have left Neville’s gun.”

“’Course it wouldn’t. You would’ve killed him before he could shoot Miles.”

“I meant,” he said slowly, like he was talking to a child, “even if Miles hadn’t stepped in the way.”

Charlie blinked.

“Charlotte, I have taken everything from you, and I’m—” His voice caught on the words, and he looked down at his hands before continuing. “An apology is never going to cover it. I know that. I took it all and I’ve never given you a damn thing back. But I’m going to tell you this right now and I need you to listen to me because, quite frankly, I’m a little tipsy right now and I’ve initiated fucking honesty hour up here.” His eyes met hers then, burned right through her, and she couldn’t look away. “I would kill a thousand men with my bare hands before I would let a bullet touch you. Before I would let anything touch you. Miles could be on the other side of the continent. Hell, Miles could be on the other side of the planet. This isn’t about him.”

Charlie’s eyes were welling up again, and she was angry at her traitorous body but she couldn’t make it stop. It was like Monroe could read her inmost thoughts, her inmost fears, the ones she’d never told anyone. That nothing was ever about her, and maybe there was a reason for that. Her mom and dad ended the world for Danny. Her mom left them for Danny. She and Miles walked to Philadelphia for Danny. Her mom tried to kill Monroe for Danny. She’d saved him instead, later, for Charlie, but that paled in comparison to everything else.

Charlie didn’t resent any of it. It was just the way things were.

And now it was all about Miles. She’d tried with Charlie, tried to start again, but they were almost like strangers. Charlie loved her mom, but she couldn’t play house with her. So Rachel was doing that with Miles instead, and Charlie had been happy at first, had thought they were starting something, but as time went by she was beginning to think they were just picking up the remnants of something that’d been suspended long ago. Something she didn’t want to know about, because asking that question could shatter everything she’d ever thought was true.

Her mind had wandered off, wallowing in years of feeling invisible. Monroe’s voice brought her back to the present, and his eyes, still intent upon her. She never felt invisible under his gaze. “Do you understand what I’m telling you, Charlie?”

Her eyebrows furrowed a little, and she considered him. Maybe she did understand, maybe she could hear what he was trying to tell her behind those words, and maybe he didn’t need to say it explicitly right now because neither of them were ready for it. Neither of them knew what to do with it.

The bottle sat untouched between them.

“Yeah, I got it,” Charlie said, and while the words were flippant, her tone was anything but. His eyes flickered, eyelids lowering a fraction, and he just stared at her.

“Your turn,” Charlie whispered.

He didn’t hesitate. “Why did you sleep with my son?”

She struggled not to flinch, struggled not to back down under his gaze. “I was bored. He was there.”

Monroe scoffed, grabbed the bottle and drained it, never taking his eyes off her all the while. Then he dipped his head down towards hers, so close she could smell the alcohol on his breath. “You want to lie, you’re going to have to lie better than that.”

“Well it doesn’t matter now,” she said evenly. “Because you just drank the last of the moonshine.”

He blinked slowly, dragging his eyes down her face. She felt dizzy and overheated, and she had a feeling the drinking was only half to blame. “I’m asking you, just give me this last one, Charlie.”

She knew it had bothered him, from the moment he caught her and Connor in the field. And he’d mentioned it after, snide remarks here and there, even ones that brought him into the equation. _Of all the guys you choose to screw, you choose a Monroe_. At the time, she’d thought they were taunts, goading her for hating him, for being weak. But later, she’d wondered. Why, if that was all it was, he’d been so outraged about it.

And now, he’d just let his secret slip. It still bothered him. And they both knew why, and it was exposing Monroe’s weakness so he was determined to make her expose her own.

Well, lucky for him she was feeling lightheaded and reckless and ready to tell him the truth for once.

Her mouth felt dry, and there was no moonshine left. She wet her lips before she spoke, bracing herself, and she didn’t miss the way his eyes followed the quick flash of her tongue. When she spoke, her voice didn’t waver. “Because he wasn’t you. Because it couldn’t be you.”

He blinked again, eyes darkening and the corner of his mouth turning up so slightly she could almost have imagined it.

“Can’t be you,” she mumbled, correcting herself, but there was no conviction in her tone.

“We’ll see,” he said, looking no less satisfied, his voice a low rumble that held more promise than it had any right to.

Charlie didn’t feel even the slightest inclination to deny that, and maybe she should have been frowning at her own reaction, but her lips were pulling up into a tiny smile as well. She’d just leapt right off that precipice she’d been so terrified of, and she’d survived. She was still sitting here, and he was still sitting next to her, and he was still Monroe, and they’d both admitted things they couldn’t take back.

“Worst game I’ve ever played,” she said, trying to keep the smile out of her voice.

Monroe shook his head, shooting her a look that was almost playful. “Get some sleep, Charlie. Reinforcements’ll be here in a few hours.”

*             *             *

She woke in the middle of the night to the sounds of a skirmish outside, and she and Monroe fumbled around in the dark, strapping on swords and picking up guns, familiar, silent preparation for yet another battle.

She was halfway down the ladder before she realized she’d woken up with her cheek burrowed against his chest and his arm around her waist.

And she was following him around the side of the barn, closer than a shadow, eyes meeting one more time to silently confirm tactics, before she realized she didn’t mind.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a birthday present for Janina and also scientific evidence that I'm incapable of writing anything short.
> 
> Title is taken from "My Blood" by Ellie Goulding.


End file.
